My Heritage, Ancestry, Find a Grave-- each and every site, including Family Search and yes,WikiTree, are only as good as their sources. I love Family Search, but I'm well aware that individuals who add the sources often make transcription errors. The best sources there are the ones with photos of the document, but even those are sometimes wrong. From the mouth of the actual person, to the ear of the record taker, to the pen of the record taker, to the eye of a later transcriber, to their sometimes interpretive transcription, to the person who wants it to be the one who fits in their tree is a huge game of Telephone. Just because ten people put the same thing on their tree doesn't make it true. You know a tree is plagiarized if you find data such as "born in of, Louisiana" or "born in , Louisiana" or "born in , , Louisiana." Or "died in Gravestone." They didn't even bother to proofread what they copied and pasted, much less research it. The only answer is here and now, with us, to take the honor code seriously and never state as fact something that you can't prove. As someone else said though, often those suspect trees can give you clues to work with. And it's very satisfying to track down the truth.
